TIT BITS AND TWADDLE

Observer, Volume XIV, Issue 784, 13 January 1894, Page 11

TIT BITS AND TWADDLE

£3An advertisement appeared in a Glasgow paper recently for a band master, 'must be fully saved, and on fire for souls.' A Melbourne W.C.T.U. young person says ' tobacco is woman's most successful rival in man's affections.' She's probably not far wrong. The trains on the ChristchurchCulverden line travel at the terrific speed of fourteen miles an hour, which is about the same as that of the Waikato ' express,' and rather faster than the old English stage-coaches got over the ground. An advertisement in an American paper in drawing attention to a ' beautiful villa ' to-let, throws in as an additional attraction ' garden next door, from which most delicious fruit may be stolen during the season.' A Sydney paper says : ( Providing you believe in your doctor he can otfen cure you with a bread pill.' 'Quite so. Bread pills and ooloured water will do the trick. But you must have faith. That electric-belt man in London received hundreds of testimonials from people who declared that the belts had cured tbem of every ailment under the sun. And now experts declare that the belts were absolutely worthless. The Ohinemuri Gazette man in discussing Stead's projected London daily paper (suggested capital £130,000) remarks : 'He (Stead) is wrcng in thinking that this is the first time a newspaper has been started on its readers' capital. What will Mr Stead say when »c tell him what j our shareholders know — that this journal was brought into existence in exactly the same manner.' What will he say ? Why he will be paralysed, we expect. How he came to overlook the Ohinemuri paper is what we want to know. Women's anti - smoking league formed in Melbourne. Members are not pledged to abstain from the soothing weed themselves. They want to put out the pipe of the other sex. They bind themselves by solemn vows not to marry smokers. Happy smokers! The league female, no matter what she is leagued to put down, is generally a bony person of uncertain age, possessing 'advanced' views and wearing coloured spectacles, and who doesn't join a league until her matrimonial chances have gone for ever. A London doctor, a specialist in skin diseases, advocates the ' reversed dinner ' cure. He says the dessert should come first and the soup last. The ' reversed dinner ' is no new idea. At many of the old country boarding-schools as well as city warehouses, when the ' hands ' live on the premises, the pastry is served first. This is not as a preventive of skin-diseases so much as an ■ appetite-destroyer. The boy or young man or woman who has eaten freely of, say, treacle-pudding doesn't hanker much for roast beef or mutton to follow. There was a big cricket match at Adelaide the other day 'Parliamentary members v. Press.' Just before it commenced a spectacled dude wandered on to the oval for a little practice. There was a muscular looking party idling about to whom the dude in the spectacles addressed himself : ' Here, my man, will you give me a bowl?' 'Certainly,' was the reply. The batsman took guard, the ball was delivered, and the amateur bat glanced round to see if a meteor had struck the earth. Then he smiled in a limp, and apologetic manner and retired. The muscular stranger was Jones, the South Adelaide ' crack.' An ex-Aucklander writing: from Hull (Eng.) to a friend here says : ' You know there is a new song here, all the rage, just now, called " Daisy_ Bell." Everybody whistles, hums or sings it. Bands play it on every possible occasion, and piano-organs wind it out by the yard. People are dropping down dead in the street from the effect of it. It's awful. Of course the papers say that it's cholera. But then we know what these papers are, don't weP They would say anything without a blush. If ever you hear of this Bong coming out to New Zealand have it quarantined, suppressed, or placed on the tariff. Anyhow, don't let it land on your shores at any price.' Alas! we have had it. One dose. More to follow.

Woman leads the world. She used smokeless powder for ages before, oxen ever thought of adopting it. Still another Social Parity Association formed, this time at Wellington. W e don't like sooial purists. They protest too much. Talk about dividends ! At the Canterbury Trotting Meeting the other day Ipswich won the mile trot (with 16seos start) in 2min. 52aeos., and paid .£285 17s ! A Pahiattta man writes to the local paper to complain that some anonymous correspondent iH continually sending him pound notes through the post. Fancy a man being cut-up about a thing like that ! Split in the Salvation camp at Sydenham (Christohuroh). The secessionists call themselves 'The New Salvation Brotherhood.' The name signifies little, i Will the Brotherhood have a big drum ? That is the question. A Wellington man has been fined five shillings and 'bound over,' for throwing a oup of tea at a steamer steward the other day. We have been tempted to do the same thing ourselves.. Ship's tea is not a thing to pine for. " The Wellington papers contain nays- ! terious references to an Auckland girl who has just eloped with a Wellington man. The loving pair have gone to England, travelling under an assumed name. But who is. the Auckland girl ? The big gooseberry season is now on. An Ashburton (Canterbury) paper reports that a local grower has produced some berries measuring 4 inches in girth, and resembling small melons. That's the sort of item we love. It goes down so easily. Napier evening paper, which is much given to gush, in noticing the dinner at the Old People's Befnge on Christmas Bay, referß to . ' the regal fare provided.' The regal fare probably oonsisted of underdone beef, greasy plum-pudding, weak tea, hymn-singing and good advice. If it didn't the Napier Befugees are to be congratulated. A shabbily-dressed woman fainted in a Melbourne Park the other day. She was destitute and starving. She was run in and charged with ' insulting behaviour,' and Melbourne Benevolent Asylum refused to take her in because she had been found guilty of ' insulting behaviour ' in fainting for want of food. This is how criminals and suicides are made. Two coud try-bred youths who visited the Masterton Acclimatization Society's grounds on Boxing Day were greatly taken with the kangaroos. They couldn't take their eyes off them. One suggested they were a new kind of rabbit, the other ventured the theory that they were specimens of Jihe Nelson rats he had ' heard tell of.' Yon are not bound to believe this item unless you want to. The vocal efforts of a party of ' waits ' rudely disturbed the slumbers of a certain Wairarapa town early on Christmas morn. ' 'Ark the 'erald hangels sing ' warbled the waits. But they didn't wait long. They had hardly got through the first verse when a dozen windows flew up violently and boots, bricks, brushes and sticks rained upon the 'erald hangels, who fled precipitately. The individual known as the American Salesman is annoyed. The other day the eeilding paper announced that this man had been ' thumped ' while in Auckland by a party present at one of his * entertainments.' He says he was not ' thumped,' and offers to bet anyone <£50 to prove that he was. Commenting on which the Napier evening paper remarks : 'He says it is not true. Really we are very sorry.' Twelve months ago, a lad, the son of a well-known, civil servant stationed at Wellington, ran away from home. He was tracked by the police to Kereru, where he was working steadily on a farm. Bnt the moment he was discovered he bolted again, this time to Shannon where he got another farm billet and won golden opinions from his employer and fellow 'hands.' The police have tracked him again. But why not let him alone ? He is not a criminal, but a steady hard-work-ing youth with a taste for farming and having his own way. One of the cheapest ads. we know is to buy a few stray initials and tack them on to your name. For two guineas the Boyal Geographical Society will sell you the right to use ' F.B.G.S.' The bociety of Literature will permit you to append 'F.L.S.' to your name for a trifling pecuniary consideration, and a sovereign for the right to dub yonrself F.l.lnst. (Fellow Imperial Institute) cannot be considered out of the way. Of course you would be only a ' non-resident ' Fellow for the soy. If you resided in London and expected a free-pass to the smoke concerts at the variety entertainments, etc., at the Institoot, you would have to pay more.

Have you a license to play ?' enquired the policeman of the wandering organ-grinder, -if not you must accompany me.' 'Agompany you?' replied the organist, ' mit pleasure ! Vat you Bing ?' Hard-up Sydneyites secured the Christmas goose by. paying five per cent deposit on the bird, and 6d a week. The time-payment plan as applied to Christmas dinners is rather a novelty — in the colonies. Goose clubs are a very old London institution . - A Southern paper remarked the other day : c The prettiest girl in Wellington has become engaged/ and now about a thousand girl residents of the Empire City are indignantly remarking that c there isn't a word of truth in the rumour about my engagement.' Thus Christclrarch Truth, a rabid Opposition paper: 'It is rumoured that, although every attempt was made to " keep it dark," the fact has leaked out through a Ministerial secretary that at the recent Cabinet meeting it was decided ,to borrow .£2,000,000 in England." Fudge. It is reported that a clever actor in Sydney, making -£40 a week, lives on 18s per week. We have our doubts about this item. If it had been stated that the olever actor made 18s a week and lived on eighteenpenoe we should have been less sceptical. Sydney is in a very hard up condition just now. According to a Southern paper : ' A number of bachelors in Auckland are starting a club, the members of which contribute so much monthly, and the first to be married will receive a certain percentage of the funds to help him through his marriage expenses.' And this is the first we have heard of it. Who are the bachelors, anyway ? The Woodville correspondent of a Wellington paper writes : — ' This place grows more like Chicago every day. One cannot help being struck with the number of people marching up and down the street on Saturday evenings. The puzzle is where they come from — it is simply a matter of elbow-room till 10 o'clock.' Great Caesar \ There was a farewell coffee supper to Rev. Curran and his wife at Hunterville the other night. A huge copper waa boiled outside the school-room. While preparations were going forward for the feed some wretched boys slipped a few pounds of rock salt into the copper The supper was not altogether a success, in consequence. A Burnham (Canterbury) industrial school-boy was some time ago placed out at service with a Kolleaton farmer. The other day the boy ran away. At the Bealey he fell into the clutches of the police and was taken to Christchurch and looked up. Next day he was sent in charge of a constable, back to Burnham. The passengers were quite struck with the boy's earnest appeal to his custodian to let him go. He would, he said, rather break stones for a month than go back to the school and suffer the flogging that was in store for him. And now Truth wants to know why children so often desert from Burnham and what reformatory effects the manager supposes will accrue from the frequent use of corporal punishment P And winds up with : * Hereafter if the scandals hinted at continue it will be the duty of Truth to thrash out the entire subject of Burnham, its inmates, and its so-called reformatory processes.' That is so. If the working of a public institution is open to suspicion the public have a right to know all about it. Our old friend Lohr writes us from Christchurch to say the Brough-Bouci-cault Co. have started the New Zealand tour under the happiest of auspices, and that while the houses are invariably crowded, the advance bookings are very heavy. At Dimedin phenomenal bnsiness was done and the company received the most cordial of welcomes. They opened in ' Dandy Diok,' concerning which a local paper remarks : 'If their production of ' Dandy Dick ' may be taken as a criterion — and good judges who have seen them in other pieces included in their almost inexhaustible repertoire aver that this comedy is not to be compared with those that are to fellow — the Brough and BouciCompany form probably the strongest combination of comedy performers by whom the colony has ever been visited. Their production of ' Dandy Dick' was certainly a genuine treat, in which all the performers appeared to signal advantage. This comedy is from the pen of Mr W. Pinero, who may justly be regarded as the most successful dramatist of the day, and is distinctly bright, epigrammatical — even faroioal.' We shall hope to have the pleasure of seeing the only genuine Lohr very shortly now. The approaching Brough-Bouoicault season at the Opera House is going to make people talk. Commercial printing of ail kinds cheaply and expeditiously done at the Obsepvee office.